Wheat Ridge (Colorado) Police Refuse to Say If They Did Anything With the Information They Got in 2000 on George Gibney

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THE GEORGE GIBNEY CHRONICLES: What the Hunt For the Most Notorious At-Large Sex Criminal in the History of Global Sports Has Told Us About the Sports Establishments and Governments on Two Continents is available for $3.49 US at amzn.to/2SmU16c. If you don’t have a Kindle-compatible device, you can get a PDF copy emailed to you by remitting $3.49 through PayPal to [email protected].

 

by Irvin Muchnick

 

PREVIOUSLY:

“Former Colorado Cop Who Investigated George Gibney in 2000 Surfaces … Promises Interview … Ducks Out. Why Was Nothing Done About Gibney’s Green Card?,” May 10, https://concussioninc.net/?p=13826

 

Everything you need to know about the pedestrian, and depressingly typical, inaction of the police in the Denver suburb of Wheat Ridge in 2000, once they were alerted to the presence in their community of rapist former Irish Olympic swim coach George Gibney, can be summarized as follows:

The Wheat Ridge Police Department would like readers in 2019, at a moment when Gibney is finally in the sights of a federal investigation, to focus on the limitations of the not instantly verified information the cops were handed nearly two decades earlier.

They do not want the public to focus on the full horrifying implications of that information. They do not want to talk about the efficiency with which much of it could have been substantiated, developed, taken to another level. Most especially, they do not want anyone questioning or analyzing what they did with the information.

What they did with the information, whether raw or refined, is … next to nothing. This is the essence of the George Gibney story — here, there, and everywhere. As I write in the “Gibney in Colorado” chapter of my recently published ebook, “It takes a village to allow a monster to roam free for decades across one small country and one large one.”

Last week the Wheat Ridge detective who authored its 2000 report, now a Denver area therapist named Lila Adams, backstroked out of a phone interview to which she’d agreed. I transitioned to written queries, which her former supervisor, now Wheat Ridge police division chief Dave Pickett, took over answering yesterday via a single-sentence statement to Concussion Inc.: “All information that the Wheat Ridge Police Department has concerning the suspicious incident reported October 5, 2000, is contained within the police report that you have been provided.”

Never mind that my questions had asked not about the information, but what was done with it. Wheat Ridge PD also collectively ignored our request for clarification of Pickett’s February 28, 2015, statement in which he summarized the 2000 report with the tantalizing line: “Because there were no allegations regarding any crime in this jurisdiction, no investigation outside of notification was done.”

I appreciate the underscoring of the fact that there was “no investigation” — that is, a dearth of worn shoe leather.

As for “notification,” this could mean notifying all local groups with which Gibney was known to be affiliated, the most important of which was his church, for which, he had bragged on his resume, he chaired a children’s eye clinic mission to Peru. Except that the report of then Detective Lila Cohen indicates no such thing happened.

Notification also could mean notifying the FBI field office and other federal authorities that Gibney might have committed fraud on his visa or green card paperwork by not disclosing his 1993 indictment in Ireland on 27 counts of child sexual abuse.

Again, all the evidence is that Wheat Ridge did neither. Below, once more, is the full text of the 2000 police report. Before finding a way not to talk to me as scheduled, Adams had touted the comprehensiveness of the report and hyped her earnest career in supporting victims. She qualifies for nomination to the hall of fame of Child Abuse Inc., sister of Concussion Inc.

From the 2017 settlement of my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of  Homeland Security at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, we know that the federal government concluded that Gibney was “not removable” for the mere fraud on his failed 2010 application for naturalized citizenship. Let’s suppose that the feds — with the help of greater diligence on the part of the Wheat Ridge police (and, earlier, the neighboring Arvada police) — had tackled the similar issue of possible misrepresentation by Gibney in his earlier immigration papers: what then would have been the legal basis and outcome? And what about today, at the time of a renewed federal government investigation that is invigorated by the Irish campaign to extradite him for reconsideration of old charges and original consideration of new ones?

We’ll get into those aspects of the story next. Then we’ll try to break new ground in the new chapter, “George Gibney in Peru.”

 

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[POLICE REPORT BY DETECTIVE LILA COHEN]

On September 20, 2000, Sergeant David Goracke received a phone call from xxxxx, reference some strong information concerning an alleged pedophile living in Wheat Ridge. Sergeant Goracke forwarded the information to me.

I called xxxxx back and learned that she was an employer to a man named George Gibney. She advised that while she was on the internet she tripped onto some information about George Gibney that was very concerning to her and she thought I should know about. xxxxx advised that George Gibney used to be an Olympic Swim Coach in Ireland but was arrested or charged with sexually assaulting children there and then came to the United States. xxxxx said she used to be a swim coach as well and this is how she got to know George better.

xxxxx said she fired George Gibney the day prior to this call because he lied to her. She said he was working as a temporary employee for her company and then, after getting to know George, she hired him full time. She said one of the things they had in common is that they were both swim coaches for children.

xxxxx advised that she knew that Gibney went to Peru on behalf of an eye clinic for children. She said Gibney works with children in his parish and is a volunteer in Golden at a Youth Detention Center. xxxxx further advised that the internet articles she read said he also coached the North Jeffco Swim Club in Colorado. xxxxx said the articles she found on the internet were on Google under Gibney. She said she found further information in Irish Times.com and Ireland.com. She said she thought Gibney was the director of an Advisory Board for the Youth Department of Corrections. She said he is also the Chairman of the International Peru Eye Clinic Foundation.

xxxxx advised that Gibney and his wife adopted an African girl who is now on the Irish Olympic Swim Team and is currently competing in the Olympics.[…] xxxxx said she knows that George has a brother who is a professor at Trinity College.

I told xxxxx that I had been sent articles last year concerning Gibney and concerns that he lived in our city at that time. I told her that he did not have to register as a sex offender and that he had not committed any crimes here that I knew of. I did tell her that I was very concerned that Gibney was working with children, especially children with issues such as being in detention or having eye problems. I further advised her that I was concerned that Gibney may travel with children in his parish to Peru. xxxxx did not know the church Gibney belonged to. She agreed to send me the information she located on the internet.

I attempted to find an advisory board through the Youth Department of Corrections but it is a State run agency and therefore does not have one. I called Lookout Mountain and was told the same. I know the members on the board for the Jefferson County Juvenile Assessment Center and Gibney is not on that. I called Arvada Police Department concerning the North Jeffco Swim Club and received a call back from Sergeant Jo Ann Rzeppa advising that she had investigated those allegations in 1995 and did not learn of any victims.

xxxxx advised that Gibney had access to a computer at work and when he was fired he was escorted to the door and did not have access to the computer. She asked if I wanted to come out and have someone look at it. I told her that I would have to send it to CBI [Colorado Bureau of Investigation] and she would be without it for several months as it would take low priority because a crime did not exist at this time. xxxxx said she could be cooperative but she could not be without a computer for that long. She said she would have her computer expert check it and get back to me.

xxxxx told me that the place Gibney volunteers with young people is at the Lab School at Lookout Mountain. She said Bill Weiner is in charge of that and gave me his phone number, [….] She said Gibney is on the board for the Metropolitan State College Lab School at Lookout Mountain. On October 5, 2000, I called and spoke with Bill Weiner who advised that George Gibney is in fact on that board. I told him that Gibney had not committed a crime here that I knew of but had some information he should be aware of if Gibney was having contact with kids. He provided me his address and I mailed him a copy of the information given to me by xxxxx.

Nothing further to report at this time.

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Concussion Inc. - Author Irvin Muchnick